With an ambitious 'Lear,' Dallas theater collaborates with Trinity

Providence's Trinity Repertory Company will open its 49th season on September 13 with Shakespeare's epic tragedy "King Lear," a co-production with The Dallas Theater Center (DTC) directed by DTC artistic director Kevin Moriarty. The production runs through October 21.

Some may remember Moriarty from his tenure as an associate director at Trinity, a position he held prior to taking the job in Dallas. It was Moriarty, Trinity's artistic director Chris Columbus recalled, initiated the project.

"I want to come back to Trinity to do 'King Lear' - AND I want to do it as a co-production with our two resident companies," Columbus writes a letter to Trinity theatergoers found in the production's playbill.

A homecoming

Both directors, Columbus points out, share something else in common: they each ran companies directed by the late Adrian Hall, Trinity's first artistic director that brought the repertory tradition to both companies.

"Watching these two companies come together has been a great joy to us both," Columbus continued in his letter. "I am thrilled that we are continuing Adrian's resident company tradition by introducing Trinity Rep audiences to these outstanding Dallas-based actors and vice versa, when our exceptional company travels to Dallas in January. Best of all, we're staging 'King Lear' in true Trinity Rep fashion; Kevin was trained here in our conservatory program, and his main teachers, Brian McEleney and Stephen Berenson, are onstage in important roles, so it is a Trinity Rep homecoming on many, many levels."

In the production McEleney portrays the titular monarch who has chosen to divide his kingdom among his three daughters-Goneril (Christie Vela), Regan (Angela Brazil), and Cordelia (Abbey Siegworth) -with the largest portion going to the daughter who loves him best. The eldest daughters shower him with compliments, while Cordelia can only speak plainly of her love. Lear flies into a rage and gives everything to the eldest sisters. Once in power, they quickly desert their father and violently turn on each other in their quest for power.

The sixteen-member cast also features Trinity Rep resident acting company members Stephen Berenson (Fool), Phyllis Kay (Gloucester), Fred Sullivan, Jr. (Oswald) and Joe Wilson, Jr. (Albany) alongside DTC resident actors Hassan El-Amin (Kent), Chamblee Ferguson (Cornwall), Lee Trull (Edmund) and Steven Michael Walters (Edgar). Rounding out the cast are Brown/Trinity Rep MFA Program '13 actors Alston Brown, Grant Chapman, Drew Ledbetter, and Brandon J. Vukovic.

McEleney jumped at the chance to play such a towering figure as King Lear.

"It's a big, big play. A big big role," McEleney told EDGE. "It's a pleasurable challenge to take it on. Every scene is a huge emotional climax. For Lear, it's one climax after another and he hits one roadblock, one big disappointment, after another."

Acting is his passion

McEleney has been at Trinity Rep since 1984 and considers himself "tremendously lucky" to be in a company with the region's finest actors. He has appeared in more than 75 plays, including "Richard II," "Richard III," "A Long Day's Journey Into Night," "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," "Angels in America," and "The Cider House Rules."

McEleney has also directed over 15 productions, including "The Crucible," "Twelfth Night," "Hamlet," and "Our Town."

However, acting remains McEleney's passion.

"I like the repetition of it", McEleney said. "I like doing it 8 times a week. For me, acting is a lot like being an athlete. You're always faced with the possibility of really just falling flat on your face. You're faced with the possibility of failure, of losing and you come out and you try to get it and try to give everything that you've got and try to make this performance for this audience the best one you've ever done, and I like doing that."

Moriarty believes "King Lear" remains as relevant today as when it was first written.

"On one level we see a powerful, self-assured and self-centered man descend into homelessness, frailty and vulnerability," Moriarty explained. "Then on a political scale, we see a country that is unified and intact at the start of the play break into factions, chaos and civil war. And through it all, the play artfully reveals the fragility of the ties that hold us together as a society, within our families, and even within our own psyches."

McEleney thinks audiences who see "King Lear" will realize how it's "a huge awesome thing to be alive, to be human, and to face the immense indifference of the universe, and keep struggling on."

"King Lear" begins previews in Providence on September 13 at 7:30pm with the inaugural First Look Thursday preview performance, featuring a special post-show talkback with the production team and cast. The First Friday preview on September 14 at 7:30pm will continue the theater's Pay What You Can (PWYC) tradition, with tickets on sale at 6:30 pm that evening, limit one per person.
For tickets, call the Trinity Rep. box office at (401) 351-4242; or visit the Trinity Repertory Company website.